1452. Unmasking Migraines: The Hidden Triggers Explained

Join Dr. Martin in today's episode of The Doctor Is In Podcast.

 

TRANSCRIPT OF TODAY'S EPISODE

Announcer:  You're listening to The Doctor Is In Podcast, brought to you by MartinClinic.com. During the episode, the doctors share a lot of information. As awesome as the info may be, it is not intended to diagnose, cure, treat, or prevent any disease. It's strictly for informational purposes.

Dr. Martin:  Well, good morning, everyone. Once again, welcome to another live this morning. Hope you're having a great start to your day. Happy to see you. Okay, so what I want to do this morning is talk about, because I get questions about this quite a bit, talking about migraines. No fun, huh? Migraines. Okay, and let's break that down a little wee bit. For those of you that are new to this program, I just got to tell you that a couple of things that were consistent with me when I was in practice, very consistent was questionnaires. Okay? So no matter what the condition was, you filled out a questionnaire. I wouldn't see a patient by the way, that hadn't filled out that questionnaire. I just wouldn't do it because that's very important. Very, very important because you need history, man, and I think that's a lost art today, where physicians, not everywhere, of course, but that's the complaint I get or I hear about at least, and that is doctors are not listening to me.

Listen, Linda, listen. Listen, Larry, okay? My dad used to tell me, listen to your patients because they have inside information. Listen, ask questions. If you ask the right questions, you're going to get information out of a patient. So that's one thing we did in our practice. One, fill out a questionnaire. It had, I don't know, over a hundred questions. Sometimes it seemed repetitious to people, but I wanted a good history to go along with the results, the blood work, the testing. Anyhoo, you can't be a functional medicine doctor. You cannot be unless you ask a lot of questions. You need to get information from the patients. Number two is testing, and in my book, sun Steak and Steel, I talked about this yesterday and remember, okay, because somebody even asked again yesterday, remember? See that little gold circle? That's to tell you in the book, sun Steak and Steel and sleep and coffee.

I have a section in there on blood work. Guys, that alone is worth the price of this book, okay? I hate to be tooting my horn, but I'm going to toot it. If you don't have this book in your library, you need it. I'll tell you why. Because not only it tells you about the reset, not only does it tell you what the reset will do for you, the metabolic reset, okay? So the book that you see behind me there, the Metabolic Reset is in this book again, it's in this book, sun, steak and Steel. So in there is the blood work that you need to get done and what to look for, what to ask your doctor for, and one thing I found out, you don't ask, you don't get in my office. You got all the testing. Most physicians, unless you ask, unless you ask, and some doctors are so in tune, you got a great doctor, good for you, but a lot of people don't, okay?

A lot of people, they don't have a relationship at all with their doctor, and anyway, I don't want to get into the negativity too much, but only to tell you that you want to know what testing you're getting done and you want to make sure they do it. I'll give you an example because this'll come up even in migraines when we talk about it this morning. I'll go into more detail. You know what I found over the years? I'm not saying every condition, but I'm telling you in a vast majority of them, people are deficient in vitamin D. And as we teach the sun and vitamin D supplementation at this time of the year, and I tell you where to get your numbers, to look at those numbers, unfortunately, a lot of doctors, they never see the connection between vitamin D and your health other than bones.

And they are programmed in medical school generally to be scared, skinny of vitamin D, first of all, be scared, skinny of the sun and scared skinny of vitamin D supplementation. It's the narrative in medicine today. It's sad because it's very, very deceiving. It's not true. You need vitamin D and you need your levels in your bloodstream to be optimized, not just, oh, my vitamin D is all right. All right, isn't good enough What they've shown. What they've proven. I tell you, I always say 150 studies because that's what it was in about 2020. No, I got over 250 studies on the importance of vitamin D from everything from your brain to your toes, immune system, your microbiome, even, wow, your brain vitamin D. But you got to have to take this into your own hands, folks, because generally physicians don't see the connection. They're not reading the research.

It's too bad. I wish they would. I wish they would even listen to this. Some do listen to this program, and they are huge proponents of vitamin D and optimizing vitamin D through the whole virus. Had they just given out vitamin D, I was crying like John the Baptist in the wilderness, and they weren't listening. Just to be political for a minute. Robert Kennedy Jr. Was talking the other day, and let's see if he can do it or not, but he talked about because of the FDA and all this, they're bureaucrats. You can't change anything over there, but he promises to shake it up. And he talked about one thing, vitamin D, the importance of it. I wish I could have gone through my screen to give him a high five. Now, will he be able to change anything? I don't know. I wish I was more optimistic.

I don't know. It's hard to go up against a narrative. People have ingrained cement in their heads to try and change anything, but you guys know better, and I'm thankful for my audience. You're open to change. You're open to getting information. Education, my friend is power. It's power, and you guys get it, and hallelujah to the So thankful. Now, why did I start doing this? Oh, yeah, we're talking about migraines back on topic, okay? Okay, so in my office, it doesn't matter what condition, but let's just stick with migraines for a bit. I could almost tell after they filled out the questionnaire what the big problem was in people suffering from migraines. I could almost tell I wasn't 100% sure, but I had a huge clue. Okay? And then testing, and what did I look for? Deficiencies. I look for are you deficient in b12, vitamin D, magnesium Omega-3, are you deficient?

Do you have leaky gut? All of those things we're really, really, really important to me. You could target, okay, let me tell you what I found over the years, okay? I get asked this question, doc, my daughter has got severe migraines, doc, I have severe migraines. What do you think the cause is? Okay, so let's go over that. Let's go over that. The number one cause of migraines, okay? The number one cause of migraines, in my opinion, okay? And what I think I can prove, however, horror hormones. Hormones, yep. Not hormones, horror hormones. You have no idea how many times that people that suffered with migraine headaches, they were in a metabolic storm as far as their hormones were concerned, okay? And a couple of very consistent things that I saw. One, they were big time estrogen dominant. Too much estrogen compared to remember, it's always a comparison because people get this wrong, and the reason is because they don't compare it.

They're looking at, oh, doc, I had my estrogen levels checked. They're all right. Well, first of all, blood tests for estrogen, I find it's not all that accurate. Urine tests better, but anyway, at the end of the day, it's estrogen versus progesterone, okay? Estrogen, progesterone have to be equal, ladies, and what I noticed in migraines that estrogen was dominant in comparison to progesterone, almost invariably estrogen dominance. Okay? What happens there, and this is very important when it comes to migraines and a lot of other things, but really important when estrogen is dominant and progesterone hasn't kept up the thyroid, slow hoses to a crawl, the thyroid, your gas pedal, okay? It's your gas pedal in the car, it slows to a crawl, and thus that is a big factor in migraines. Your thyroid not working properly, doesn't mean it's diseased, it means it's not running up to snuff with estrogen dominance.

You have a hard time converting T four thyroid hormone to T three, the one that your thyroid needs to work properly. Your thyroid is like a puppet, got a lot of strings attached to it, and it's very finicky. The thyroid is a finicky organ because it relies on so many different things to be in sync, and one of them especially is your T three, the production of T three. You don't produce a lot of T three, like less than a teaspoon a year, and that's why I've said this for a long time. The problem with thyroid testing is they don't look at the complete picture of it. Okay? Now, let me see if I have my drawing out. I probably have it somewhere here. I don't want to have to draw this again. Okay, hold on. Let me see if I have it over here.

I might, and if I don't, well, I'll draw it again. Okay, and you guys know I flunked art. Oh, wait, let's do it again. Okay. I am going to do this, this, this, this, this, and this. Okay, can you see that? What does that look like to you? Okay, for the folks that are listening on a podcast, it's my old pyramid, hormonal pyramid. See that? Now, does that look like a pyramid to you? Probably not, but who cares? I flunked art. I majored in recess in school. Okay, so at the bottom, you got your ovaries, and I always put when I drew this for patients, estrogen, progesterone have to be equal. Then up here, okay, halfway up the pyramid, okay, these guys on the side, those are your adrenals. Add adrenal on top of kidneys. What do they release? Cortisol stress has a big effect effect on your hormones.

Okay, now at the top, repeat. Repeat. What is that? That's your thyroid. All of these circles have to be working properly for your thyroid to work properly. Gas pedal your metabolism. You look at food and gain weight, you just look at it, you don't have to eat it, and you gain weight and you're sluggish. Your thyroid ain't working properly, and it'll give you a migraine too. It could. Now the one in the middle, okay? What's in the middle there? That's your insulin, that's your pancreas, and that only works when you eat. Do you think food is important? Imagine knowing nothing about food, okay? And Robert Kennedy Jr. Said he's going to go after the food companies too. Hallelujah. I'll believe it when I see it, okay? I'll believe it when I see it anyway. I don't want to be skeptical. I want to be an optimist.

Okay? Now, back to migraines. When I get a patient in and we tested all those things, including your insulin, here's what I found, okay? Here's what I found. Almost invariably, estrogen dominance, low levels of progesterone. Now, that could be two reasons. The low levels of progesterone, okay? One of them is the stress hormone. Cortisol. Cortisol robs progesterone, cortisol, you're stressed, and today stress pours gasoline on the fire and stress robs progesterone. So guess what? Now you've got a double whammo. Your stress, your progesterone is robbed because you can't even make cortisol without progesterone. Estrogen goes up, estrogen goes up, your thyroid don't work properly. Am I giving you a migraine already? Just talking about it. You're stressed. You rob progesterone, you rob progesterone, your estrogen goes up. Estrogen dominance slows your thyroid to a stink and crawl and cortisol on its own when it is long-term and prolonged will affect your pancreas.

It will affect at the cellular level insulin. It can create insulin resistance on its own. That's why I wrote a book in 2011, serial Killers, two Hormones that Want You Dead, insulin and Cortisol, cortisol and Insulin. In 2011, I wrote that book, okay? And I was telling you the other day, I should write another book on it. Three hormones that want you dead, insulin, cortisol, and estrogen. Estrogen makes you a woman, but makes a man a woman too. We got way too much of it today in men and not enough testosterone. And by the way, this is my finding. Just talk to men for a minute. When you don't have enough testosterone, a lot of times you're going to get a migraine. You can get migraines from a lack of testosterone in combination, usually in men with low levels of vitamin D. Okay, so here's what other findings.

So in women, migraines, estrogen dominance, 100%. In my practice, I never saw an exception to it. Numero two. Oh, okay. Here's what I found. Generally dehydrated. They were dehydrated. Okay, now, hydration. You know me and Vitamin W, how much do you need? 64 ounces or two liters every day. 64 ounces, seven days a week, two liters of water. You got the memo. It's Vitamin W. People walk around because they have no idea. They're extremely dehydrated, and please don't blame coffee. I know everybody wants to. You drink a coffee, you better drink two bottles of water with it so you don't get dehydrated. I know that's been around for many years. I debunk that coffee doesn't dehydrate you. Coffee's good for you. Coffee doesn't. Did you get our email on that? Coffee doesn't dehydrate. Okay. Anyway, here's what I found. Hormones, dehydration, and I love electrolytes.

You guys know that one of the most important electrolytes in terms of deficiency when it comes to migraines, magnesium, they were consistently low in magnesium. Magnesium does a lot of things in the body, and one thing it does, it relaxes blood vessels, and I found in migraines, yeah, very deficient. Okay? When you're dehydrated, by the way, I was looking at a study the other day, I just got to tell you. They were talking about pain from a migraine, and it says, well, you know what happens? Your dura matter. You know what your dura matter is? You sort of got a little sack around your brain, okay? It's a protective sack, and when you are dehydrated, that's sack. Your dura matter, okay? Becomes inflamed. The dura matter becomes inflamed. The little helmet you ever have on the inside around your brain becomes inflamed. Pain, inflammation, pain.

So that's what I saw consistently. Okay? I saw horror hormones even in men, low testosterone, high levels of estrogen, low vitamin D, low magnesium, vitamin D. Why would that have an effect on a migraine? Well, to me, it's because of its antiinflammatory effect. Vitamin D does everything. It's a tremendous anti-inflammatory vitamin D. It's really important. Unlike any other vitamin, your body can't live without it. You'll never be healthy without optimal levels of vitamin D. You just can't be. If you're deficient in vitamin D, you're in trouble. I put it in what should be tested for metabolic syndrome. I think it 100% should be part of metabolic syndrome because it is so connected to insulin resistance too. Vitamin D, okay, dehydration, horror hormones, low vitamin D, and now I'm going to add one more, and then we close consistently, what did I find? Low levels of B12 not optimized.

And if your blood tests show you, oh, my B12 is normal, well, that's for a mouse, not for you what they call normal. Remember, B12 testing is a hundred years old. I wish we would have a birthday party for it and send it out to retirement. Change the numbers. At least if you're below 800, you are not optimized and you don't have an enough B12 and B12 is one of the most essential vitamins. Your brain can't work without B12. Why do you think I want you to eat steak? You think I'm just kidding? B twelve's found in the animal kingdom. Ooh, so many young girls, they used to come to my office, they were low in B12, and I said, do you not like steak? What Dr. Martin? That's got cholesterol. You know those things. Cows got eyeballs. I can't eat anything when eyeballs.

I used to get migraines from listening to that. Okay, you know what, guys? I would love to go into medical schools and teach them Nutrition 1 0 1. I wouldn't even need more than a day. Get 'em to understand some of these things. Hormones 1 0 1. Anyway, okay, guys, you guys are wonderful. More than wonderful. What an audience we have here at The Doctor is in. I mean, you guys are unreal. Join our private Facebook group because there's so much good goings ons there. It's tremendous. Okay? The feedback, people asking questions. If you want your questions specifically asked to, by the way, send them into info@martinclinic.com. Okay? That makes sure it gets to me. And because if you just post here, good, but I don't see that stuff, okay? Because it goes by me way too fast, first of all, for me to even stop and read it. But send me questions because tomorrow's question and answer Friday on info@martinclinic.com clinic. Okay? Thank you very much, guys. We love you so much. Talk to you soon.

Announcer:  You've reached the end of another Doctor Is In Podcast, with your hosts, Doctor Martin Junior and Senior. Be sure to catch our next episode and thanks for listening!

Back to blog